The Drive-By Truckers got personal with the outlaw country rock of this monumental tribute to the small scale stories of the South. After the critical acclaim of their double-album 'Southern Rock Opera' the group continued their triple guitar onslaught with hair raising results. 'Decoration Day'
Hood says: "'Decoration Day' http://www.drivebytruckers.com/ "The Deeper In"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umCXmWcKJK8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvId33nqBG0 VIDEO "Sink Hole"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q-Ma6UlrtA VIDEO "Marry Me"
“'Marry Me' is one that I always, always play. It’s a lot of fun to play. It was inspired -- I don’t know if this was true, but I don’t care -- but there was this friend of mine, he had a girlfriend named Mary, but he broke up with her and got another girlfriend. One night he and his new girlfriend are getting busy, and he started saying the wrong name. She’s like, 'What did you say?' and he’s 'Mary…Marry…me.' I wanted to write something about him, and that story summed him up perfectly. That was how quick he was. He was killed in a car wreck right in the year that we started this band. He was kind of supposed to be part of it, and that song was who he was, every line in it. That’s one of my favorites that I’ve ever written; it’s a rock 'n' roll song and it had to be that. I’m always proud if I can get a good rock 'n' roll song that’s got some substance to it. I’m happier. If every one of them could be that, they would be. "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlcOs3fCN3M VIDEO
"My Sweet Annette"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-PF1Egqz3g VIDEO "Outfit"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyJ9JfWbKLE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kObBZVj_Zjc VIDEO "Heathens"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cY8x_bafIA VIDEO "(Something's Got to) Give Pretty Soon"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-Qia8Mm5dU VIDEO "Careless"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_PpP0qWjw0 VIDEO "Decoration Day"
"This was the first song I wrote after joining the band, and it uses a fictional protagonist to tell a story that's rumored to be true. If a fight goes on long enough, it can be impossible to remember who started it. I really love the coda. Barbe and the boys turned it into a tornado." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDpCkx6hSCI VIDEO "Loaded Gun in the Closet"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HcMqld-RLI VIDEO 'Decoration Day' full album:
VIDEO 1. "The Deeper In" Hood 3:152. "Sink Hole" Hood 3:273. "Hell No, I Ain't Happy" Hood 4:384. "Marry Me" Cooley 5:425. "My Sweet Annette" Hood 3:516. "Outfit" Isbell 4:067. "Heathens" Hood 4:478. "Sounds Better in the Song" Cooley 4:089. "(Something's Got to) Give Pretty Soon" Hood 3:3810. "Your Daddy Hates Me" Hood 6:4011. "Careless" Hood 2:0712. "When the Pin Hits the Shell" Cooley 4:1013. "Do It Yourself" Hood 3:2014. "Decoration Day" Isbell 5:4715. "Loaded Gun in the Closet" Cooley 5:13
"I’ve always written. This is just the first time approached the guys with the songs and felt like they were Drive-by Trucker material. I’ve always written, but for the last five years I’ve kind of been in the back, in the shadows, because I’ve been focusing on being the bass player. It seemed like time for me to come out and introduce myself as a writer." Hood says that the band road-tested many of the new songs on their 'Dirt Underneath' tour: "It was the quantity of new songs, I guess. There were so many of them. We'd always catch flak from labels or whatever, for playing songs off the next record six months before it came out. This time, we decided that was exactly what we were doing. We pretty much advertised it. Don't tell us what we can or can't do, you know? You're not paying my children's bills...I think we worked up maybe twelve out of the nineteen songs. By the end of the tour, probably eight or nine songs of the show each night were brand new songs. When we went into the studio, everything was road-tested and worked out. I think it's what enabled us to make the record so fast-- we made the lion's share of this record in ten days. We do the vocals separately, and definitely took a bit of time with those. And by that I don't mean all summer, but, like, another week...We didn't set out to make a long record. The goal was to record a bunch of songs and see what we had after two weeks, then figure out if we had what we needed to make a record. We had a very open-ended goal this time, but once we started doing it it took on a life of its own. It was very organic. When we finished a song, we knew which song to do next. It just flowed, like a slow-motion version of one of our shows. No set list. We pick the first song as we're walking up on stage, and where it goes from there, who knows? We were listening back, and the original plan was to pick the best ten, fourteen of these, and that will be our record. But it just stuck together." "There are things that happen along the way of the recording process that I’m a little fuzzy on from time to time. [Hood] remembering all that is really impressive. If it’s one of my songs, I wrote the words. But did I play acoustic or electric guitar? Hell, I don’t know...Well, I would love to be able to write a lot more than I do, but I’ve never worked that way. We both bring in pretty much everything we have, or everything we think is worth working with. If I have two songs that I feel good enough about, I’ll put two on the record. If it’s six or seven, then it’s six or seven...If I bring it in and we don’t put it on the album, then usually I was the one going, ' No no no, let me take this back and think about it a little longer'.”
'Brighter Than Creation's Dark' 'Brighter Than Creation's Dark' http://www.drivebytruckers.com/ was inspired by the murder of House of Freaks singer Bryan Harvey and his family. Hood says: "'Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife' was written as a result of trying to make some kind of peace with an unspeakable tragedy that affected so many people I know and love. I was hoping to help with the healing and closure by trying to provide a beautiful song that dwells on the positives of love and family. I knew it was the first song on the album the moment I wrote it." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs6rgjWZXyQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDuuGtWTL9k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CyNabyA4lA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k96zrh5tuY8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPLrrM2fz8c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6q8tggGAgQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF5wnlRWn6o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_GdEjMv1Ms "It is coming from pop culture and music in particular, but that's because that's what section my seats are in. That's my view of the show. But it turned out to be more of an overall social commentary with the state of pop culture as the backdrop. Maybe there's no difference between the two anymore. Maybe that's what I was trying to say." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6R0Udhja44 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nlL-7PHCXg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zvyGKFCG1o "We invited them on our bus. We were touring with the Black Crowes, and they sent word. "Hey, we're Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, Green Berets, and our buddy's about to go back over. We really would love to have him get to meet the band before he goes back over. Is there any way to hook us up?" We invited him back. I really wanted to hear their point of view, their side of the story. It's a different point of view than what you get from the media, or a politician. It's coming from someone that you've got to respect, much more than I'm going to respect some politician, whether I agree with him or not. These guys are actually there. Over the course of the evening they said some things that I vehemently disagree with, but I respect where they come from, their point of view, their right to have it, and the fact that they back it up with action. They're not just sitting in some chamber or the Oval Office, making decisions that they don't even suffer consequences for, other than their vote-getting abilities."http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyacZQ5HTgk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZbRhmUmv2U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlIO3-X3muU was inspired by the true-life story of Scott Baxendale and gives the album its title.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdmyXZuHUW0 VIDEO took over seven years to write and was recorded in one take. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaxC18ep9Us Cooley says: " The Hurricane Katrina aftermath is where all that came from...That was the time period. I had a lot of those lyrics for probably a year-and-a-half before they ever turned into one solid thing. Some of [that song] I had going through my head for a long time. I just kept coming back to it. But the hurricane was the source of a lot of it. I watched that play out in Europe, which was a little different...We left New Orleans. The day of, or maybe right before it hit, we flew to Spain. It had hit the coast by the time we landed. I didn't see it on Fox News...I wrote that on Halloween. No shit. That might've been what came up first, actually. It was a rare Halloween that I was home. We were getting the kids ready to trick-or-treat, so that's what was in my head. Sometimes it really is that fuckin' simple...It's metaphorical as hell, but it popped into my head on Halloween!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEW5p3vGo10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxLXCSqOvUo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65QF_fcLbKQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gwf9IGmsi7o playlistVIDEO "Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife" (Hood) - 3:05
"3 Dimes Down" (Cooley) - 3:19 "The Righteous Path" (Hood) - 4:13
"I'm Sorry Huston" (Tucker) - 3:11
"Perfect Timing" (Cooley) - 2:58
"Daddy Needs a Drink" (Hood) - 3:48
"Self Destructive Zones" (Cooley) - 4:12
"Bob" (Cooley) - 2:15 "Home Field Advantage" (Tucker) - 5:01
"The Opening Act" (Hood) - 6:48 "Lisa's Birthday" (Cooley) - 3:19 "That Man I Shot" (Hood) - 6:03
"The Purgatory Line" (Tucker) - 3:48
"The Home Front" (Hood) - 3:18 "Checkout Time in Vegas" (Cooley) - 2:41
"You and Your Crystal Meth" (Hood) - 2:19 "Goode's Field Road" (Hood) - 5:28
"A Ghost to Most" (Cooley) - 4:41
"The Monument Valley" (Hood) - 4:33
